Vintage Musical Instruments — Local services in Dahlonega

(This is an older review from the pandemic era. I changed something in it and now it appears as if it was just posted; it was not.)

I was disappointed with the repair work done on my guitar. It wasn't a horrible job but it wasn't a good job either.

The luthier wasn't able to polish the frets because they didn't have any high grit sandpaper so, I had to "polish" the frets with my strings from play wear and now my frets are "polished" very unevenly.

He seemed to do an okay job with the fret leveling and crowning but there are still some noticeable corners on about half of the fret edges and especially on the higher frets where people usually don't play. (You can tell how he had it laid on the table because one side is relatively smooth and the other looks like it barely got any attention along with the nut which is just as sharp as before)

He also got multiple dings and scratches on my guitar neck. Which I personally don't mind on the specific guitar I sent in, but I would be quite irritated if it happened to a higher end guitar. (It's named 'Rawhide' which explains the guitar well)

So, pretty much I paid for an incomplete job where if I had the proper tools I could have done it myself and probably much better.

I'm not trying to start anything and I don't want to get the Luthier in trouble, I just want to see quality work from the Luthier so if I ever bring in a higher end guitar I won't have to sleep in fear worrying about possible damage.

My recommendation for the Luthier is if someone pays you to level, crown and polish frets, make sure you have ALL of the necessary tools and really take the time to do a good job on ALL of the frets. Also make sure to keep the guitar safe in the process.

If I had known what to expect for what I paid for, I would have pressed the Luthier to finish the job, but at the time I didn't know what high quality frets were like.

Lastly, on an unrelated topic that really goes to personal preference, they require masks to enter the store, no exceptions. I don't support being muzzled for a virus with a 99%+ survival rate and even 95%+ if you're over the age of 70, where it's so "deadly" you require a medical test just to see if you have it, and asymptomatic spread has been proven to be extremely rare, if not just another myth to keep us living in fear. But to...

I'm very disappointed in this "business" we had taken a family heirloom to him to be repaired, he said it would take two weeks. Hey, great you got a deal. Let's go ahead and pay for it so you will have the money on hand to pay for the parts and your time. Three weeks later we have to call and the guitar still isn't finished. Four weeks later we call once again it's still not done. I go to the "business" to see if it's even been touched, and low and behold it had not. He had already told us that sales from other people come first with it being around the holidays. Wait wait so a sale that was already made gets placed last?! That was my daughter's Christmas present as well to hear the guitar play once again that her papa had gave to her 10 years ago, then he pasted away. I will never trust this place again repairs or...

I live in Atlanta, and I was spending the weekend close by Dahlonega, I found this shop and dropped my guitar for some adjustments, knowing it would take me a couple hours round trip to pickup again. Best decision ever, my 25 year old Takamine feels brand new again. Ken knows his stuff and is a beautiful person....